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Although Antiqua is used almost ubiquitously in Germany, Fraktur still has its proponents in Germany (mainly among older people). Just to give one reason, which

by wolfgke 12y ago

Although Antiqua is used almost ubiquitously in Germany, Fraktur still has its proponents in Germany (mainly among older people). Just to give one reason, which I consider as pretty convincing: Fraktur has two different small s (long s and round s) > http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fraktur_%28Schrift%29#mediaviewer/Datei:Fraktur_letter_S.png http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fraktur_%28Schrift%29#mediaview... while Antiqua only has one. Since in German combinations of st, sp are pronounced differently and in German words are concatenated by juxtaposition, this can lead to situations where writing a German word in Antiqua can make it non-unique: Consider the word "Wachstube". Written in Antiqua it can either mean "Wach[-]stube" (guardroom) or "Wachs[-]tube" (tube of wax). If you write this word in Fraktur, it is clear, what word is meant: > http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wachstube.svg http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wachstube.svg I only explained the situation for the small s. There are lots of other rules, too. For details see > http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fraktursatz http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fraktursatz

rbonvall 12y ago
You could still write Wachſtube and Wachstube. Long s (ſ) could be made available in any script, and the fact that it isn't maybe tells that it is not such a big problem.
- wolfgke 12y ago
  There are additional rules for non-optional ligatures hinting the pronunciation which sometimes must be used and sometimes must not; see my post at > https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7944134 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7944134 Indeed your argument shows that long s and pronunciation-hinting ligatures are not strictly necessary. But neither are high-level languages for programming (you could code anything, say in C or assembler). Nevertheless most programmers prefer using higher-level languages over C or assembler, because they implement desirable features. So why not use a writing system which already implements such nice features by construction?

by wolfgke 12y ago

rbonvall 12y ago

You could still write Wachſtube and Wachstube. Long s (ſ) could be made available in any script, and the fact that it isn't maybe tells that it is not such a big problem.

wolfgke 12y ago
There are additional rules for non-optional ligatures hinting the pronunciation which sometimes must be used and sometimes must not; see my post at > https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7944134 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7944134 Indeed your argument shows that long s and pronunciation-hinting ligatures are not strictly necessary. But neither are high-level languages for programming (you could code anything, say in C or assembler). Nevertheless most programmers prefer using higher-level languages over C or assembler, because they implement desirable features. So why not use a writing system which already implements such nice features by construction?